What no one has told you about how to manage obsessive thoughts.

Tips to learn how to emotionally manage obsessive thoughts.

An obsessive thought has to do with images, memories and/or words whose content is repetitive and intrusive.. In addition, there is no control over them, they appear involuntarily generating a lot of discomfort.

They have no use in the rational plane, since no matter how much our head turns around the same thing, we do not manage to extract any positive conclusion, if not to overwhelm us more and more, increasing our level of anguish.

Understanding obsessive thoughts

Here are some examples of obsessive thoughts:

• I am going to die, this pain in the chest is not normal, I cannot breathe.... Why? Is there something else? Is it a more serious illness? Is it a mental illness?
• I keep thinking about whether my life will make sense or not, if I am well, if others will see me well?
• I keep thinking about the discussion with Pilar, what she said to me, what she called me... Should I have kept quiet?
• I don't know why but I think about killing my boss or I have nightmares about him dying, it scares me a lot to think that something could happen to him.
• I'm so afraid of my mother dying, I can't get it out of my head.
• Has something happened to her, has she already arrived, has she been unfaithful to me?
• Why did this happen? Why is it like this? I don't understand. I can't find the explanation.
• I'd throw myself on the train track... Does my life have any meaning?
• My body is horrible, my nose looks ugly.

What no one has told you about obsessive thoughts is that they do have a very specific utility, but on an emotional level. on the emotional level.

Displacement

There is a psychoanalytic defense mechanism that we call displacement. Defenses are created in our earliest childhood, to defend ourselves from something or someone that was going to harm us. Many times they are unconscious, we do not even remember that they existed when we were small. As that danger was too great for our childish mind to manage, that defense became very rigid. The defense was useful in a context of previous danger and/or trauma, but in the present moment it is not always useful.

Displacement occurs when the emotions we feel about something or someone are too uncomfortable or we simply don't know how to manage them, so we displace them to our head. It is something like, they need to come out somewhere and they are uncontrolled by so much repressing them, so they become ruminative thoughts, accelerated and meaningless. Therefore, working on emotional intelligence will be an extremely important factor in the treatment of these obsessive thoughts.

In my experience as a psychologist, I have seen that the emotions most associated with obsessive thoughts are four: guilt, anger, fear and emotional pain (or sadness). In addition, there is another clear element in these obsessive thoughts: the feeling of lack of control.

But beware, guilt has a catch. It is a parasitic emotion. A parasitic emotion is an emotion that covers other genuine emotions that try to get out, such as anger, rage or emotional pain. And why is it there? Because it was useful when we were small, in our family or at school.

Examples

I give you examples of this.

When I was little my mother always told me I was a bad girl when I got angry, so I learned to feel guilty every time I tried to express a need or set a limit. Since no one saw and validated my emotion, I started to think about myself: did I do it wrong, am I to blame, why is my mother like that, why do I imagine them dead? (because you are expressing anger by "killing" them in your fantasy).

On the other hand, when I was little my mother was always suffering hospital admissions as a result of her Cardiovascular disease. No one would explain it to me, my father would pretend it was nothing so as not to worry me and thus protect me, thinking that would be a good thing. Invisibilizing the fear and pain made it so that the only way to sustain it was from possible explanations as to why my mother suddenly disappeared: Where did she go? Will she be okay? Will I be okay? Will it happen to me as it did to her? Will I have the same heart disease? Is it wrong if I tell how I feel since my father is trying to hide it? (guilt over fear).

Also, when I was little and got angry, my parents would punish me and stop talking to me for two days. They would also punish me by staring at the wall. My anger and fear that they would stop loving me would shift to the following obsessive thoughts: Why are they doing this to me? Will they reject me if I get angry again? Will I have done wrong in showing them my needs? Will I be stupid? (guilt and anger inwardly because it cannot be expressed outwardly) Have I been so bad? Should I die for being so bad? (and, as an adult: Has my partner come home yet? Has he been unfaithful to me? Does my life have meaning? Why don't I die?).

I can't forget when my family always talked about how good my sister's clothes looked. Even how ugly my mother's nose was, my father always picked on her a lot. My mother sometimes told me that why didn't I buy other clothes, that they would fit me better. Seeing her diet every once in a while made me nervous, I could see her suffering with all the weight and body issues.

But nobody talked about it at home. Even though they had not said anything "direct" towards me or my physique, I started to worry about it. It got much worse when at school they started calling me piggy, because of my slightly upturned nose. Little by little, as a little girl, I began to think that I was not well inside or outside. So I started to think: Am I ugly? Do I need to lose weight? Am I a freak? Should I get a nose job? Are my friends prettier than me? Does it make sense for someone like me to be in this life? (guilt and emotional pain).

Characteristics of obsessive thoughts

Obsessive thoughts, therefore, are often triggered by situations in which we use repression of emotions such as fear, anger, or even emotional pain..... And then they are displaced.

We learn to do it in childhood. There may or may not be a parasitic culpogenic component, as I was explaining. Sometimes a thought or chain of thoughts only hides a non-parasitic emotion, or several emotions together.

However, there are times there are times when such thoughts do not have an external trigger (argument with someone, sickness, pain, pain, etc.). (argument with someone, illness, pain or event) but may be internal. Suddenly a traumatic memory is triggered by very intense emotions that my internal world cannot manage (anger, fear, pain...) and then, suddenly, I cannot stop thinking. An example of this is the confinement we experienced during the first wave of COVID. Why did so many people come back for psychological help? Because the "simple" fact of being isolated gave them more time to spend time with themselves and connect with their inner world.

When this connection is made and they stop, old memories that have been erased for a long time (when I was bullied at school, when my parents beat me, when my puppy died...) may come to mind and activate obsessive mechanisms that are difficult to eradicate. activate obsessive mechanisms that are difficult to eradicate..

These obsessions can lead us to think about death, about COVID in a disproportionate way, about how terrible the future can be, about our body, about death... When in reality what is happening is that, far from worrying and obsessing about something real, what is underneath and what we are covering up are emotions that need to be processed.

What factors can provoke the development of these obsessive thoughts?

These are the main ones elements that may contribute to the emergence of obsessive thoughts or trigger them.

• Fearful parents in general. Fear of the future, of physical or mental illness, etc.
• Hypochondriac parents. Focused on worries about illness issues.
• Negative parents. They think in a catastrophic and hopeless way all the time.
• Parents who have difficulty regulating emotions. They are very mental, rational, focused on solutions and not so much on letting their emotions be felt.
• Perfectionist parents. Everything must be controlled, perfect, ideal. There is no room for emotions, there is room for what people will say (much importance to appearance) and non-vulnerability, because it is judged as bad and embarrassing. Therefore, there is a very internalized fear of rejection.
• Parents who play with emotional manipulation, victimhood and blackmail. Something like: "daughter, how angry you are, what a temper. With all I do for you. I can't tell you anything, how much you make me suffer".
• Personality structure predisposing to obsessiveness. Everyone has a personality and may be more or less prone to develop obsessive thoughts.
• Traumatic events in the face of which the brain cannot find any rational explanation, let alone process the experience emotionally. There is a clear lack of control for the individual. Examples are accidents, abuse, neglect, loss or death, bullying, etc.

How to heal obsessive thoughts?

Accept that it is a defense that in some contexts may not be useful.

Thinking about something carefully to make the best decision can be useful, there is a rational and emotional benefit, but it is not always so. So identify at what age or in what environment you started to develop this obsessive defense against getting in touch with your emotions.

1. Close your eyes and locate the emotion in your body.

Name it, and then shape, structure, color... Breathe. Notice it in your body. Do this until it decreases or increases. The emotion will pass.

Is it anger, fear, or pain...?

Depending on what emotion it is, there will be a different message and action.. If it is anger, this will lead us to put limits to the person or situation that has hurt us or to move away from it. If it is fear, we should protect ourselves. If it is pain, we should cry alone or in company.

3. Is it an emotion of the present, of the past, or both?

Sometimes, an argument with someone generates a rage that we do not understand where it comes from.. Maybe what that person said to me reminded me of what another person (mother, father, cousin, school...) who assaulted me when I was a child said. At other times, like the waves of COVID viruses, they can reactivate the fear I felt as a child when my mother suffered from anxiety attacks.

4. Do what the emotion asks you to do in the present as long as it is not responding to the past.

For example, I can set limits to someone who has insulted me, but not get angry at someone in an inordinate way simply because they remind me of a person in my past who did do something bad to me. In that case, I will have to go to therapy to heal my past.

The same with fear; if there is a virus like the one that produces COVID, obviously from there it is functional to feel fear. And I have to protect myself with a mask, with vaccines... but yes, if I feel fear whenever my chest hurts thinking that I have a cardiovascular disease and it is not real, I cannot act with fear, but I can breathe it, hold it, and work on my past in therapy.

5. Don't focus on the obsessive thought

Accept it and understand it as a defense of the past that does not always work and focus on the emotion.. If we get carried away by the obsessive thought we will only be reinforcing this defense. Do not do any compulsion, that is to say, something that eliminates the anguish of that obsessive thought.

For example, if your chest hurts and you think you may have a heart attack all the time, do not look for information on the Internet, do not consult a doctor or a family member... just expose yourself to that emotion of fear by closing your eyes and breathing it in. Then reflect on whether that emotion has been triggered by some present trigger or by a past trauma that has to do with hypochondria, as in this case.

Concluding...

In summary, think of emotions listened to, processed and emotionally regulated as equal to obsessive thoughts eradicated. However, processing the entrenched emotions from the past that have to do with painful memories will require a psychotherapeutic process by a trained trauma specialist.